Joshua Fishman - July 13, 1982

Relationship with Ukrainians

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Uh, there were a few Polish people there but not too ma...not too many. The Polish people were mostly involved in the government uh, public government and uh, they were teachers in the Polish schools and uh, very few Poles otherwise. Uh, they were also anti-Semitic, but uh, they were more cultural than the Ukrainians. And uh, they were--even the cultural Poles they, they also uh, pronounced the anti-Semitism--they showed what they can. But uh, I found out, in my experience the Ukrainians were much worse than the Poles. You hear a lot about the Polish people, but the Ukrainians were much, were much worse.

Do you know--do you have any examples of that?

Uh, the example of uh, of uh, what the Polish uh, or for the Ukrainians, you mean, or the Polish?

Ukrainians.

Ukrainians. For example, we heard that some Polish--some Poles uh, were hiding Jews during the Holocaust--very few, but there were some cases. Among the Ukrainians, I--there was only one in our city. They kept him a couple months--two or three months and uh, and they let him go and uh, he survived. And another one uh, who, in a village near Dombrowitza who uh, he hide one of my--a distant cousin there. And that's also because uh, her father must have paid him a lot of money. ??? But the, he was a religious uh, Ukrainian, very religious. He wouldn't do it himself. He would not go to kill uh, anybody, even, even Jewish people because he was very--there were many Ukrainians who seemed to be friendly during peacetime with the Jews, and uh, during the war they uh, when, during the Holocaust they killed Jews. Uh, that, that one in particular did not. But there's uh, one, in one instance that I know about this--I found out piece by piece uh, history about this. He did something which uh, it contributed to the death of a brother of mine, two sisters. And that girl's father was hiding in his, in his house. Not house, she was hiding in his uh, in his uh, barn--the hay. Uh, there's uh, a lot of uh, it will take a lot of time to tell you all the history of it because I could sit hours with you. This is only one instance. You want to hear that?